Evidence supports a link between handwriting and aspects of literacy, including both reading and writing. Most evidence, however, pertains to children from grade one and above, once foundation skills known to support emerging literacy have been established. The purpose of this systematic review is to synthesise the extant literature concerning…

This introductory article discusses the difficulties many children with learning disabilities have in text production skills and how these difficulties affect not only how they write but also the pace and course of their writing development. The influence of spelling miscues on perceptions of writing ability is also addressed. (CR)

This article considers differences between good and poor spellers and concludes individual differences in spelling ability are the result of differences in the knowledge of sound-spelling information rather than differences in visual memory abilities. Poor spellers may rely more on visual strategies, but this is due to limited phonological…

Research evidence is reviewed to show that transcription and working memory processes constrain the development of composition skills in students with and without learning disabilities and that in turn other processes constrain the development of transcription and working memory skills. Interventions for transcription are discussed. (Author/CR)

This article discusses similarities and differences between learning to read and spell words. While the processes are closely related and correlations between reading and spelling are high, the amount of information to be drawn from memory is greater for spellers who must produce multiple letters correctly sequenced than for readers. (Contains…

This handbook proposes that early speech and language problems may contribute to reading problems. The relationship between oral language problems and written language problems is presented, followed by tools and models of assessment and treatment. In chapter 1, results of follow-up studies of children with early speech and language problems are…